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House Democrats Prepare Next Major Bill: Immigration Bill That Would Allow 2.5 Million People to Apply for Legal Status and Put Them on the Way That Could Lead to US Citizenship .
Bill HR 6 – called the Dream and Promise Act – combines the DREAM Act, a bill on legalization for unauthorized immigrants who arrived in the United States as a child, to a proposal allowing some immigrants to benefit. temporary humanitarian protection to apply for permanent legal status. .
What unites the two groups of immigrants is that both are rooted in the United States and generally live there longer (sometimes much more) than 10 years, but without permanent status. "Living with uncertainty has defined most of my 16 years in the United States," said Jessica Garcia, recipient of the DACA Award, aged 21, at a press conference that officially unveiled the bill.
Both groups also risk losing their protections under President Donald Trump. Trump has decided to end the deferred action program for child arrivals, which protects many DREAMers from deportation, and refused to renew the temporary protection of hundreds of thousands of children. immigrants in the context of humanitarian programs with temporary protection status and delayed forced departure.
"We will not let Donald Trump send them back, and we will not ask them to live in a state of constant fear and uncertainty," said Nydia Velázquez (D-NY), who said presented the bill Representatives Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) and Yvette Clarke (D-NY) at Tuesday's press conference.
If passed, HR 6 would constitute the most generous immigration bill since Reagan's "amnesty" in 1986. But it is extremely likely that it would be passed in the House without major changes, it will not be passed by the Republican Senate – nor signed by Trump. – in its present form.
Nevertheless, the bill is important because it is a statement of the Democratic consensus on immigration. This could come into play if Trump and the Republicans made a new effort to pass an immigration bill – or if Congress was again incited to act by the threat of ending the DACA. And as candidates for Democratic 2020 begin to express their own vision of the presidency and set their priorities for what they would do if elected, the bill is an indicator of the party's position.
What would the bill do
HR 6 targets two different immigrant groups that currently have no way to apply for permanent legal status in the United States. The first group consists of DREAMers or unauthorized immigrants who arrived in the United States when they were children; the second group is made up of immigrants who have been protected because of a war or a natural disaster in their home country.
Most of this second group has temporary protection status (temporary protection status), legal status assigned country by country. These immigrants, mainly from El Salvador, Honduras and Haiti, have generally been in the United States for decades. It also includes hundreds of Liberians enjoying lesser protection called Deferred Forced Departure.
Many of these immigrants are currently protected from deportation; TPS grants immigrants a temporary legal status and about 675,000 DREAMers are currently protected by the Deferred Action Plan for Child Arrivals created by President Obama in 2012. The Trump Administration is trying to end the DACA and remove the GST for most of its recipients in El Salvador, Honduras and Haiti). Both efforts are currently blocked in federal court. Protections granted to Liberians by the DED, however, should expire at the end of March.
Under HR 6, all of them – the DREAMers and the beneficiaries of humanitarian aid – would be allowed to apply for permanent legal status.
Humanitarian beneficiaries (GST and DED) who have been in the US since the fall of 2016 would simply be allowed to apply for green cards (legal permanent residence), which they can not do for the time being. they do not meet the requirements. After receiving a green card for five years, they would be allowed to apply for citizenship, just like any other green card holder.
For DREAMers – whether or not they currently have DACA – the way would be a little more complicated. They would be allowed to apply for "conditional permanent residence", which would be granted under certain conditions:
- They arrived in the United States before turning 18 and had been in the United States for at least four years.
- They were not sentenced for one crime or three separate offenses involving a total sentence of 90 days in prison.
- They have a high school diploma or GED, or are enrolled in a program to obtain a high school diploma or GED
- They can pass the background checks and some other standard eligibility conditions
The conditional status would last 10 years. But DREAMs with a conditional status could ask for green cards at any time if they were graduating from a higher education institution (or had completed two years in good standing of a bachelor's degree or from a technical program), if they had served for two years in the army, or worked for three years.
There is no official estimate or focus group on the number of people affected by the current bill. A previous version of the DREAM law, introduced in 2017, would have allowed about 2.1 million people to apply for the status (even if they would not be immediately qualified, especially according to the training requirements. .
HR 6 is slightly more generous than the 2017 version – especially to allow people enrolled in a degree or GED program but who do not have legal status. There are also at least 300,000, and up to 440,000, other immigrants with GST and DED who are not covered by the 2017 Act and who are eligible to apply for green cards.
In total, it is fair to estimate that about 2.5 million immigrants could apply for legal status through this bill – many of whom would get green cards and eventually citizenship.
HR 6 will not be adopted in its current form. But this reflects a new democratic consensus.
The last time Democrats held the House of Representatives in 2010, one of the last bills that they passed was the DREAM law. This version was much less generous than the current version; it would have affected about 1.5 million immigrants. And of course, there was no mention of GST or DED.
Since 2010, however, the legalization of immigrants has become a democratic issue instead of being bipartite or bipartisanal. This mobilized the left of the party caucus and encouraged the center to join us.
In addition, the Trump Presidency has made immigration a factor a lot easier question for Democrats. The population opposed to the administration – the "resistance" – is eager to hear the Democrats denounce the rhetoric and vision of Trump as "are not who we are". a particular alternative.
Now that the Democrats are sitting in Congress, and preparing for 2020, they have both more opportunities and more pressure to present their own agenda.
HR 6 does not reflect the full scope of this program. Most members of Congress who spoke on Tuesday insisted that after the adoption of this bill (which will not be the case), they want to get down to work on a "comprehensive reform of l & # 39; immigration. " Almost all congressional Democrats agree that legalization must be available to all. 11 million unauthorized immigrants to the United States.
But there could be no democratic consensus on a "comprehensive immigration reform" – which in previous editions, including a bill passed by the Senate in 2013, included a significant increase in Law enforcement and spending at the border. Some progressives have begun to challenge Democrats to oppose any funding for border barriers or any increase in implementation budgets; others continue to think that such things would be a good compromise to legalize millions of immigrants.
There is a democratic consensus that immigrants who currently have the most to lose with Trump – GST legal status holders, DACA and DED beneficiaries benefiting from expulsion protections, and other DREAMs who may lose the territory from their family if they were deported – should not only be allowed to stay in the United States but officially recognized and given the opportunity to become full citizens. And there is a consensus that it should not require trade-offs.
This is not a complete immigration platform. But this is the place where the Democrats seem to have the impression of having the best leverage against Trump on his signing problem.
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